2008 Conference

Well, we just had the third and final conference of the TPN project. It all went very well, although Mark's absence was keenly felt by everyone there. Since it was the last event of the project, this is likely to be the final post on the blog.

I gave a paper, titled "Can Transcendental Philosophy be Naturalised?", in which I offered an account of Husserl's transcendental theory of intersubjectivity. Husserl's theory pruport's to offer the necessary conditions of experiencing something as 'alter ego'. I discussed two common objections to the view and one suggestion, due to Shaun Gallagher, that problems with the theory can be resolved by recourse to empirical work on neonate imitation and mirror neurons. I suggested that we should be somewhat cautious concerning the application of this empirical work but that, nevertheless, the prospects of a naturalised version of Husserl's account are in some respects promising.

Daniel warren gave a paper, titled "Substance, Inherence and the Thinking Substance in Kant". In the paper he presented an interpretation of Kant's way with the rational psychologist in the Paralogisms. He argued that we best understand Kant's arguments there only if we take into account (a) Kant's conception of logic, and (b) the basic metaphysical categories that Kant inherits from the tradition. By paying attention to (a) we see that the Strawsonian reading of the Paralogisms doesn't really get at Kant's intended arguments. For Strawson thinks the arguments turn partly on how we successfully identify individuals with singular terms. But Kant's intensional logic means that that he is more properly understood to be concerned with how we identify the properties an object (as a substance) has essentially rather than accidentally. By paying attention to (b) we see that Kant's arguments in the Paralogisms turn on denying that the rational psychologist has the resources to properly understand the kind of compositional unity a thinking subject would have as a substance. But this strategey itself depends on employing various metaphysical categories Kant inherits from Baumgarten.

David Papineau's paper, "Philosophy as an A Posteriori Discipline", did exactly what it said on the tin. Arguing against those who see the philosophical enterprise as analytic and/or a priori, he offered an account of philosophy as broadly continuous with empirical science. His view is one not about how philosophy should be done, but about how philosophy in fact is done. Thus he thinks that philosophers who claim to be engaging either in conceptual analysis, or in (synthetic a priori) transcendental reasoning are, in fact, mistaken about their own practise. What they are actually doing is offering synthetic theories about the world that have the distinctive feature that they adress problems the resolution of which calls for no further empirical evidence.

Rolf-Peter Horstmann's paper, "Fichte's Anti-Sceptical Strategies", described two phases of Fichte's work in which he took distinct approaches to the problem of philosophical scepticism. Before 1800, Fichte offered a 'justification-oriented' picture in which the sceptic is confronted on his own terms. This account, he argued, must be considered a failure, as the sceptic can always question that which is brought in to do the justificatory work. In his post-1800 work, however, Fichte attempted to respond to scepticism in a way that might be called 'grounding-oriented'. Here there is a conception of 'absolute knowing' which itself constitutes the distinction between subject and conceptually structure world.

The second day of the conference began with Hilary Kornblith's, "Reasons, Naturalism and Transcendental Philosophy". He argued that a certain non-naturalistic picture of human reason, shared by a number of philsophers all either explicitly or implicitly influenced by Kant, is based upon false empirial assumptions. The picture is one in which humans, unlike other animals, have the capacity to reflect on their own belief-forming mechanisms and thereby revise them. We are able to do this since we possess the concepts of reason, belief and truth. As a consequence, only human subjects can be truly ascribed states of knowledge, or even states of belief. Kornblith argued that the purported distinction between human and animal cognition was unfounded and, in fact, the picture makes it very hard to see how the normal course of human development to bring us from an animal-like situation into 'the space of reasons'.

Ernie Sosa's paper, "Transcendental and Circular Reasoning" addressed the problem of how it could be that our perceptual beliefs can be justified in a non-circular way. He argued that perceptual beleifs can be reason-based, but nevertheless gain their epistemic via their reliablility in providing required information. He also considered a sceptical scenario in which it is suggested that we may have taken a pill that cognitively disables us. In response to this, he offered a transcendental argument to the effect that we cannon but believe our own reasoning faculties to be reliable. To deny it, is to prevent oneself from being able to put one's trust in that very denial.

In the final paper, "Sartre and the Transcendental Tradition", Sebastian Gardner argued that, on any reasonably broad construal, Sartre's early philosophy must be counted transcendental. One difficulty with understanding his philosophy is Sartre's emphatic claim that he is not an idealist despite the fact that he sees the structure of the world as being correlated with the fundamental structures of the human subject. How are we to understand this correlation without supposing that the world is in some sense subject-dependent. Sebastian suggested that Sartre may have considered a Fictean response according to which the distinction between being for-itself and in-itself is constituted by something itself prior to the subjective.

VRG: Maddy on Quine

The chapter on Quine may seem like in-fighting amongst naturalists, but it has the virtue of delineating further, through the criticisms of Quine, the SP's position. If what I have to say today is unclear, that's because my thoughts on the issues are still fuzzy.

The criticisms of Quine appear to come from two directions: on the one hand he is said to incorporate non-naturlistic elements into his naturalism, on the other the exact character of his naturalism is taken to be problematic. In actual fact, however, the two strands of criticism are closely related. For, on Maddy's view, Quine's failing to be naturalistic enough - his taking on board too great a portion of the goals and concepts of the traditional philosophical (metaphysical and epistemological) project - is really one of the major sources of the problems with his position.

Of central importance here is the way in which Maddy interprets Quine as responding to (Stroudian) scepticism. Quine admits that there is a certain sort of circularity involved in the naturalist's response to scepticism (see fn. 4, p.84), in that the results of scientific investigation are relied upon in offering an account of knowledge. However, Maddy argues, Quine's own conception of what scientific investigation amounts to appears to undercut this move. For Quine thinks that the job of the naturalised epistemologist is to offer an account of "the relation between the meager input and the torrential output" (Quoted on p.89). Quine's 'input' is the 'stimulation of his sensory reseptors', and the 'output' is his theory. As is well known, Quine thinks that the former underdetermines the latter.

But, argues Maddy, thinking of things in this way is problematic. For our acceptance of one theory over another is, in a certain sense, arbitrary, and so it is unclear what justifies us in relying on this particular one in our response to the sceptic - in our account of the world and our knowledge of it. The problem, as Maddy sees it, is to conceive of naturalised epistemology as, roughly speaking, a sophisticated empiricism pursuing much the same goals as traditional epistemology (i.e. to account for the legitimacy of our 'output 'on the basis of our 'input')

SP sees the project of naturalised epistemology differently from Quine. She refuses to give the (Stroudian) sceptic the foothold he requires, because she declines the challenge of responding to the sceptic on his own terms. To the question of how we know, say, about medium sized physcal objects, she simply cites the relevant scientific findings (about neurophysiology, visual perception, etc.). SP finds no use for Quine's input/output distinction and thus doesn't think of the one as underdetermining the other. If so, then the Stroudian sceptic can't mount the same challenge as he did to Quine.

Early in the chapter, Maddy says of SP that, "she doesn't denounce as 'unscientific' the desire of Stroud's skeptic to find an independent justification for her methods; she simply sees no way to do this." (p.85). This way of putting things, however, seems to me to be rather precarious. For it sounds rather like accepting scepticism. Quine openly denies that science is "answerable to any supra-scientific tribunal" (quoted on p.85). SP, in keeping with her refusal to delimit science, doesn't do this. But, so it seems to me, she needs to have some other way of answering the objection that her methods are problematically circular. If all SP says to the Stroudian sceptic is that his objections are unanswerable, I think that she is in trouble. Maddy sometimes gives the impression that the difference, between SP and Quine, makes the difference between the legitimacy or otherwise of employing the apparently circular reasoning involved in the naturalistic response to scepticism. At no point does SP rely on any proposition such as 'beliefs formed scientifically are justified', for she has no conception of 'the scientific' per se, rather she simply uses the science itself. Does this sort of move help? We need to think about exactly the sort of circularity involved in both Quine's and SP's views.

Consider two arguments, A and B:

(A1) Beliefs formed scientifically are justified
(A2) Science (psychology perhaps) says that we see medium sized physical objects
So,
(A3) We see/there are medium sized physical objects

(B1) The human visual system works in such-and-such a way
(B2) That the human visual system works in this way allows us to see medium sized physical objects
So,
(B3) We see/there are medium sized physical objects

Roughly speaking, A is supposed to characterise a Quinian naturalist's reasoning (ignoring other aspects of Quine's view, such as ontological relativity, and concentrating on the naturalism), and B SP's reasoning. I hope I'm not mischaracterising here, although I admit that I'm pretty uncertain.

My question is whether A is problematically circular in a way in which B avoids. Obviously neither are explicitly circular (in neither case does the conclusion appear as a premise). But both look somehow problematic. The problem with A looks to be that our reasons for accepting (A1) are dependent on our accepting (A3). That is, if we didn't already accept (A3) we wouldn't accept (A1). With B, it looks as though the same can be said for both (B1) and (B2), that our reasons for accepting them rely on our already accepting (B3).

The question whether this sort of circularity is (always) a bad thing, making the arguments useless, is I think a very difficult one. For it depends on our giving a satisfying gloss on "our reasons for our accepting___ are depndent on our accepting___". But my point is that both arguments seem to be in the same boat. So, I don't see how SP's strategy is an improvement in the Quinian one (ignoring the comments about input/output, and the later discussion of holism which I leave to one side).

So, just admitting to the Stroudian sceptic that you can't answer his objection is not good enough. You need to be able to account for the reasonableness of your own procedures. If this is done by relying on the results of those procedures, the Stroudian can say that you're arguing in a circular way. But, as I see it, Quine and SP face the same challenge here.